'El Capitan' Ranked Most Powerful Supercomputer In the World (engadget.com) 20
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's "El Capitan" supercomputer is now ranked as the world's most powerful, exceeding a High-Performance Linpack (HPL) score of 1.742 exaflops on the latest Top500 list. Engadget reports: El Capitan is only the third "exascale" computer, meaning it can perform more than a quintillion calculations in a second. The other two, called Frontier and Aurora, claim the second and third place slots on the TOP500 now. Unsurprisingly, all of these massive machines live within government research facilities: El Capitan is housed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Frontier is at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Argonne National Laboratory claims Aurora. [Cray Computing] had a hand in all three systems.
El Capitan has more than 11 million combined CPU and GPU cores based on AMD 4th-gen EPYC processors. These 24-core processors are rated at 1.8GHz each and have AMD Instinct M1300A APUs. It's also relatively efficient, as such systems go, squeezing out an estimated 58.89 Gigaflops per watt. If you're wondering what El Capitan is built for, the answer is addressing nuclear stockpile safety, but it can also be used for nuclear counterterrorism.
El Capitan has more than 11 million combined CPU and GPU cores based on AMD 4th-gen EPYC processors. These 24-core processors are rated at 1.8GHz each and have AMD Instinct M1300A APUs. It's also relatively efficient, as such systems go, squeezing out an estimated 58.89 Gigaflops per watt. If you're wondering what El Capitan is built for, the answer is addressing nuclear stockpile safety, but it can also be used for nuclear counterterrorism.
"... estimated 58.89 Gigaflops per watt." (Score:1)
I missed the last Apple event. Apple loves comparing the specs for its latest hardware with that of the competition. What value did it quote for the M4 mini?
Tesla (Score:2)
The kessel run (Score:3)
It does it in 8 parsnips
Re: (Score:2)
Nuclear counterterrorism (Score:3)
but it can also be used for nuclear counterterrorism.
What does that mean?
Re: (Score:2)
Presumably that there is some paranoia that bad dudes will get their hands on nukes or , more likely, thermal 'dirty bomb' capacity (Ie a regular bomb that spreads nasty radioactive shit everywhere, ie a bomb packed with spent uranium shit)
I'm not super convinced but the likelyhood of certain rogue states (Iran, NK) leveling up to nuke capable and then outfitting whacko groups with that capacity cant be entirely ruled out.
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Presumably that there is some paranoia that bad dudes will get their hands on nukes or , more likely, thermal 'dirty bomb' capacity
I'm sure you are right, there are crazy people who want to set of nuclear bombs in populated areas. I'm just not sure how a supercomputer helps with counterterrorism to stop that.
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"Nuclear counterterrorism" was included in the budget request so Congress would approve it.
Congress will often allocate funding for a specific purpose, so a budget request can be streamlined if written to fit that purpose.
Are these computers actually being used for "nuclear counterterrorism"? Of course not.
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The only maybe I can come up with is, a system in this class is capable of full-physics entire-lifetime simulations of a nuclear power plant and all the different accidents that can happen to it, so I... guess it might conceivably be used to examine terrorist attack scenarios and preempt them or engineer to defeat
Re: (Score:2)
but it can also be used for nuclear counterterrorism.
What does that mean?
Simulation of the latest nuclear bombs we are designing, in lieu of actual real-world testing that prematurely reveals what we are up to.
All that kind of stuff is done under the Department Of Energy (DOE). That they can use those same supercomputers for weather or biology or even other nuclear physics modelling (e.g. fusion reactors) is just a side benefit. The real reason for all this computing power has always been for bomb design/simulations.
Beowulf (Score:1)
something
Re: (Score:3)
Ahh the old Slashdot memes, a gentler age
Re: (Score:2)
In Soviet Russia, Slashdot memes YOU!
Re: (Score:2)
Ahh the old Slashdot memes, a gentler age
-1 Disagree. Umm, I mean "Flamebait".
Yes, but does it run ... (Score:1)
... Linux^H^H^H^H^HEl Capitan [wikipedia.org]?
I wonder if I could borrow it for a bit (Score:2)
I have to think this thing would have a fighting chance of running Flight Simulator 2024 with all the bells and whistles turned to max.
Mac Mini (Score:3)
This is fantastic news, as I am unable to upgrade my 2009 Mac Mini beyond El Capitan! I never even realized it was a supercomputer!
I understand that Apple wants me to buy a new supercomputer, but why Homebrew totally dropped it is a mystery....
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Apple hasn't made a supercomputer since the PowerMac G4 [youtube.com]...